The hand that grips the walking stick is shaky. But Gandharv Singh seems indomitable. The 110-year-old farmer from Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district arrived at the farmers’ protest site at Ghazipur a month ago to register his resistance to the seven-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre and the “black laws” it has passed.
He has been camping there ever since, adding the weight of the history of the dissent he had once took part in and lived through to the solidarity of the farmers gathered at the Ghazipur, Tikri and Singhu borders of Delhi who have been protesting against three controversial farm laws for more than nine months.
The crevices of Singh’s face reflect the folds of changing times in a changing India. “I was in my late thirties when the fight against the British was on the rise and believe me, the determination I see here at Ghazipur reminds me of those times. But today, our oppressors are fellow Indians,” Singh told The Wire.
The British and the BJP
— source thewire.in | Tarushi Aswani | 13/Aug/2021